The mad world of Marty Feldman The mad world of Marty Feldman Marty Feldman in the 1974 film Young Frankenstein Credit: Rex Features 28 January 2016 • 7:58am Marty Feldman is being celebrated in 2016 in a new West End show called Jeepers Creepers, which is directed by Monty Python's Terry Jones. This review of a biography of the comedian, who had a mild, wild life, was first published in November 2011. Those bulging egg eyes helped make Marty Feldman a comedy megastar but he was always quite deadpan about his looks. After being cast in Gene Wilder's award-winning 1974 film Young Frankenstein, Feldman said: "I am the only guy ever to appear in a horror film without make-up." The "freaky" appearance, as he described his face, belied an intelligent, inquisitive mind and a nature drawn to, and inspiring of, mayhem. The most enjoyable sections in Robert Ross's fine 2011 biography of the actor are about the days before Feldman made it as a Hollywood star.

Born in London's Canning Town, to Jewish emigrants from Kiev (who changed their surname), Feldman had a hunger for rebellion. He was repeatedly thrown out of schools – "my whole outlook was 'ya-boo-sucks'" he said – and left home in his early teens, nourishing a hatred for the 1950s English ethos of "cold showers and mathematics". Feldman believed there was something deeply unappealing about the uptight, respectable Englishman, saying once: "The British produced a great number of passionless mass murderers. . . little bank clerks, the neighbourhood doctor. They all have the sort of bald, bony heads and wear pebble dash lenses and raincoats." Actor and comedy writer Marty Feldman Feldman said he had consciously chosen to be a misfit because it was "more interesting". In his late teens he drifted around Soho – and Paris – indulging in a life of petty crime and getting his kicks on Benzedrine and heroin. Yet he was ambitious, drawn to writing and performing. After working at a fairground, he found regular employment as part of a travelling nude revue show called Saucy Girls.

The girls were supposed to stand absolutely still, to avoid titillating audiences, and it amused him when he overheard the advice from a seedy theatre manager to a girl if she was spotted by an official from the Watch Committee moving her nipples. "Tell 'em the rostrum's rickety." The life of "putrid" regional theatres and crummy B&Bs is brought wonderfully to life by Ross. One landlady once brought Feldman and his troupe their vegetables in a chamber pot. The book is well-researched and there are lots of new interviews, and excerpts from exisiting ones including with Feldman's long-term writing partner, the late Barry Took . In the 1960s, Feldman's imagination brought him success – with shows such as The Army Game, Bootsie and Snudge and Round The Horne. He certainly had a gift for offbeat ideas and language. Describing one acquaintance, Feldman wrote: "If Orson Welles were dying of cancer and bought himself a fright wig, he would have looked like this man." It was Feldman who co-wrote the Four Yorkshire Men skit so associated with Monty Python.

The Pythons were fans and it is Terry Jones who is directing a tribute stage show to Feldman called Jeepers Creepers. Jones described Feldman as "a very, very funny man". 100 funny jokes by 100 comedians Feldman always desperately wanted to perform and this meant, ultimately, exploiting the look of his eyes, which he said were "the product of a thyroid condition caused by an accident when somebody stuck a pencil in my eye when I was a boy". A move to America, and the success of Young Frankenstein, made him a world star but he was never really happy in Beverley Hills. He hated the gaudy rich and was most at ease when playing football with a group of Italian waiters he had befriended. Feldman remained a football fanatic throughout his life. He once had a character in a sketch called Reginald Sweet who worked for the Football Association, purely so he could answer the phone and say: "Hello, Sweet FA." Feldman treasured a prized shirt once worn by his Chelsea hero Charlie Cooke.

It tickled him that when he took his wife Lauretta to see Chelsea, she commented: "What pretty costumes they've got on." Marty Feldman on The Muppets in 1980 Credit: Rex Features Although wild, he was oddly principled about some matters. He appeared at the Oz trial – daring to ask the Judge: "Am I waking you up?" – and wasn't afraid to offend Frank Sinatra even when he had gone to hear him sing. Feldman was announced as part of the audience at a concert but declined a request to meet the famous singer, saying, "I don't like his politics." Feldman was not principled about his sex life, though, being repeatedly unfaithful to his Lauretta, his wife for 23 years. He claimed he had been in love 500 times and joked that "success has gone to my crotch". The years after Young Frankenstein are a tale of painful decline. His brave film In God We Tru$t, which exposed organised religion and greedy evangelist preachers, bombed. His name was toxic at the box office. He became depressed, took even more drugs and allegedly attempted suicide.

There were conflicting stories about his death, at the age of 48, in Mexico City in December 1982. A fall on set, food poisoning and drugs were variously blamed for contributing to the massive heart attack that killed him. Jazz was the other real love of his life. Although he described himself as "the world's worst trumpet player", he adored playing in bands, including the first that saxophone player Tubby Hayes ever joined. "I met Groucho Marx and all he did was talk about his bowels," said the comedian. Feldman's life, incidentally, offers a object lesson in the maxim that you should not meet your heroes. "I met Groucho Marx and all he did was talk about his bowels," said the comedian. Feldman fared no better with jazz giant Charlie Parker, whom he met in Paris. "All he did was talk about snooker. I was so pissed off," Feldman said. His funeral was fitting. A jazz band played I Can't Give You Anything But Love as he was buried in Los Angelese near Buster Keaton, the comedian he revered above all others. Feldman's life is an engrossing, tragi-comic story.

He was a manic depressive, an addictive personality embroiled in many, many strange adventures. On his 21st birthday, for example, he was beaten up in Cardiff by a Scottish dwarf. Film director Mel Brooks described him as "the most complicated human being I have ever met" and Ross's thorough biography brings you up close to the strangeness. A 2011 biography of Marty Feldman Premium 01 Jan 2017, 4:30pm PERFORMERS: MARTY FELDMAN | Laughterlog.com PERFORMERS: MARTY FELDMAN Died: December 2 1982 by PETER TATCHELL (reprinted from LAUGH MAGAZINE #12, 1995) For a handful of years in the late 1960s he was the funniest man on television. But Marty Feldman wanted to be a movie star and set off on a quest for big screen immortality which would ultimately cause his downfall. Marty was born in London’s East End in 1933, the son of a Jewish dressmaker. He left school at the age of fifteen for a life in show business.

By his late teens his love of comedy and jazz led him to form a knockabout stage act with two friends called Morris, Marty And Mitch, very much under the influence of Hollywood heroes like the Marx Brothers and Olsen And Johnson. They were enthusiastic, but not a success. He met Barry Took in 1954 and the pair found common ground in their sense of humour. They gravitated to writing (and occasionally appearing on) several early A.T. V. programmes in the early days of commercial television. By the end of the 1950s, Feldman was part of the team scripting radio’s Educating Archie and Took was supplying material for Beyond Our Ken and the final series of Take It From Here. Unable to work with partner Eric Merriman on the latter, Took asked Marty to assist him (uncredited) on the parts of the show he had to supply, in particular the Glums segments. As a result, Took and Feldman were also invited to contribute scripts for the Harry Worth/Peter Jones radio pro-gramme We’re In Business (which also featured Irene Handl and Dick Emery) and Granada’s top-rating television series The Army Game (then in its fourth season).

The popularity of two of that show’s characters, Sgt. Major Claud Snudge (played by Bill Fraser) and Private Bisley (Alfie Bass), led to a spinoff series Bootsie And Snudge, and Feldman and Took were assigned to be the chief writers. Re-locating the ex-army types to an exclusive London club (with Clive Dunn as a doddery waiter and Robert Dorning as the establishment’s hon. sec.) soon had the show the most watched on British television, but there were problems on the horizon. By the end of the first season (in mid-1961), Marty had become noticeably erratic in his behaviour and eventually insisted on working alone. Took had to bring in other writers to ensure the required number of scripts would be forthcoming and only after several months of frustration, did he discover his partner was suffering a severe hyperthyroid condition. Urgent treatment and convalescence resulted in Marty’s full recovery, but the operation caused a noticeable bulging of his eyes as an unavoidable side-effect. At the time, it was most distressing, but in later years it would be a huge advantage when he went back to performing.

Feldman resumed working with Took, and the two helped resurrect Frankie Howerd’s flagging career with material for guest spots and on radio. Marty eventually left Bootsie And Snudge to his partner (preferring to confront new challenges) and in a freelance capacity contributed a number of one-off episodes for B.B.C. television’s Comedy Playhouse series. Titles included Nicked At The Bottle, Good Luck Sir – You Got A Lucky Face, Here I Come – Whoever I Am and Judgement Day For Elijah Jones. With Barry Took he scripted The Walrus And The Carpenter, Barnaby Spoot And The Exploding Whoopee Cushion, Memoirs Of A Chaise Longue and two not produced for several years Tooth And Claw and The Making Of Peregrine. The Playhouse series was primarily a testing ground for prospective sitcoms, but only The Walrus And The Carpenter (with Felix Aylmer and Hugh Griffith) led to a spinoff season, although it was a dud with viewers. Other B.B.C. TV projects at the time included a series called Barney Is My Darling (with Irene Handl and Bill Fraser) and several Terry Scott Scott On … specials (Scott On Birds, Scott On Money and Scott On Food).

Took and Feldman’s most successful venture of the mid-1960s was the B.B.C. radio programme Round The Horne, the new series for Kenneth Horne and his Beyond Our Ken cast. It became enormously popular and, forty years later, recordings of the show sell in huge numbers. In 1966, Marty was asked to be chief writer for David Frost’s new BBCTV series The Frost Report (which launched John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett on successful careers). In a writing sense, the show included many names who also influenced the future of British comedy … Barry Cryer, Dick Vosburgh, Neil Shand and prospective Pythons Michael Palm and Terry Jones, among others. The Frost Report was a milestone for all concerned and after an initial thirteen episode run, Frost decided to finance his three main performers in individual projects for commercial television. In the case of John Cleese, it was to be a sketch comedy series called At Last The 1948 Show (the title being a veiled dig at the procrastination of programme planners).

The programme was in effect a visual linking of the brains behind the two top radio comedies of the 1960s … I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again (which starred Cleese and Tim Brooke Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie) and Feldman and Took’s Round The Horne. In addition to Cleese and Brooke Taylor and fellow Cambridge Footlights alumnus Graham Chapman, Cleese shocked Frost by suggesting Marty Feldman himself should be part of the performing team. Any reticence anyone may have had about Feldman’s looks quickly vanished when the show got under way. His strange little man character was a huge success and he more than held his own in the company of his illustrious fellow cast members (who went on to triumphs in such programmes as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Goodies). Despite being a victim of unfortunate programming decisions on the commercial television networks around Britain (resulting in London being the only area to get all episodes), At Last The 1948 Show produced a remarkably high standard of material throughout its two seasons (for a total of thirteen episodes). Made at the end of the black-and-white era, the programme also enjoyed screenings on Australian television.

It is particularly disappointing to note that all but one of the recordings were subsequently junked. Happily, some decades later, three additional episodes have surfaced, as well as five “best-of” editions (preserved by a Swedish TV company!). With most of the 1948 Shows out of circulation in the years after its demise, a large number of the scripts were performed again by The Two Ronnies (on television) and by various Monty Python cast members in various stage productions throughout the 1970s (see an itemisation below). For Feldman, At Last The 1948 Show was a huge career boost, and he was offered his own sketch-comedy series on BBC2 the following year. Two series of Marty were made (in colour) with a supporting cast of Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Junkin and Roland Macleod. A half-hour compilation of highlights subsequently won an award at the Montreux festival.

Marty had a much higher budget than its Rediffusion predecessor, and Feldman could indulge in a number of clever outdoor routines highlighting a day in the life of a stuntman, a long-distance golfer and a henpecked husband (all paying homage to the great days of silent movies). Television success led to roles on the cinema screen as well. He appeared with an all-star cast in The Bed Sitting Room in 1969 before starring in his own vehicle Every Home Should Have One, about the tribulations of being an advertising executive. It would be the last time he and Barry Took wrote together, and the venture suffered from excesses of ego and inexperience on both sides of the camera. By a strange quirk of fate, Marty also made his debut on American television soon after. Not because of his film work, but as a result of producers there having seen copies of his BBC2 series (sent out routinely by B.B.C. Enterprises to encourage programme bookings). Several sketches were subsequently aired on the then-popular Dean Martin Show on N.B.C. to such acclaim that Marty himself was invited to appear on the programme.

The sight of Feldman in dinner jacket (as was customary for guests on the show) was quite a novelty in itself. In one episode he and the host performed the door-to-door undertaker skit (from At Last The 1948 Show). But before that, in 1970 Marty was signed as a regular on the Martin show’s summer-season replacement The Golddiggers In London, which ran for nine editions on N.B.C. until major programming was set to resume that September. A year later, Britain’s A.T.V. decided to capitalise on Feldman’s success on both sides of the Atlantic by financing a series of hour long programmes called The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine (with a supporting cast of Spike Milligan, Orson Welles, dancer Tommy Tune, Bob Todd and Hugh Paddick). The result though was an uneven mix of various comedy styles and (despite having some nice moments) had nowhere near the consistency of his earlier efforts. A 30-minute compilation did win another award at Montreux, however. Taking a break from television, Marty toured Australia in early 1972 and appeared on stage with a selection of favourite TV routines.

One of the local networks signed him for a special during the visit as well. Feldman was back at the B.B.C. in early 1974 for a series called Marty Back Together Again. In an attempt to recapture the glory of his earlier series, all the stops were pulled out to promote the project . . . he even appeared on the front cover of the Radio Times. Despite all the hype, the show lacked the writing talent of the 1960’s venture and was prepared to rework earlier material (even the Undertaker resurfaced, and each episode featured the star performing a classic Tom Lehrer composition from a decade before). Amid some offscreen clashes of egos during production only five editions made it to air and the programme was not seen outside Britain. Soon after the television disappointment, Marty Feldman embarked on a significant career change. Mel Brooks signed him to play the hunchback to Gene Wilder’s hero in his burlesque of horror movies, Young Frankenstein. And Marty was in his element, a film star on a Hollywood backlot appearing in a major motion picture by a leading American director.

Young Frankenstein was a successful moneyearner for 20th Century-Fox and Wilder asked him to take part in his first directorial effort soon after, The Adventure Of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother. Marty also appeared in a segment of the Italian 40° In The Shade (aka Sex With A Smile). Brooks wanted Feldman for his next production Silent Movie, a loving lampoon of an even earlier genre of tinseltown. This time Marty was cast as a Ben Turpin-like clown whose eyes are his most notable comedic asset. Having made three major motion pictures, Marty Feldman was now ready to sit in the director’s chair himself and convinced Universal to finance several projects, beginning with The Last Remake Of Beau Geste. With Michael York, Terry-Thomas, Peter Ustinov, Spike Milligan and Feldman himself, it was more of a remake of The Three Feathers than the title suggested, and was notable for a clever piece of editing which saw Marty having a conversation with Gary Cooper in footage from the original. The device would later be used in the Steve Martin film, Dead Men Don‘t Wear Plaid.

With only a modest return from his first venture, Universal hoped the follow-up In God We Trust (a religious satire) might be better received. Unfortunately, not all roads down the Life Of Brian trail were paved with yellow brick, and the movie turned out to be a disaster. Feldman was distraught when Universal cancelled the contract for future projects and in his despair he swallowed an overdose of pills as a quick way out. Luckily, medical help was able to revive him, but his career in Hollywood was over. As he tried to rebuild his life, he agreed to take minor roles in a couple of forthcoming productions . . . the Jerry Lewis/Madeline Kahn Slapstick (Of Another Kind) and then in his At Last 1948 Show friend Graham Chapman’s pirate sendup Yellowbeard. Both ended up unsuccessful vehicles for their participants, but in Marty’s case it didn’t matter. The day after he’d completed his scenes on the Chapman venture, he suffered a heart attack in his Mexico hotel room and died, aged forty-nine.

A decade of living the Hollywood life (with its drink, drugs and an excessive daily intake of nicotine) had caught up with the gifted funnyman and any future plaudits would have to come from recordings of the great moments of his heyday in the 1960s.

TELEVISION AT LAST THE 1948 SHOW (Associated-Rediffusion) b/w Cast: Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Marty Feldman and Aimi MacDonald Series #1: February 15 to March 22 1967 (6 x 25 min) Series #2: September 26 to November 7 1967 (7 x 25 min) (see separate file for itemizations and merchandising) MARTY Cast: Marty Feldman, Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Junkin, Roland Macleod and Mary Miller Series #1: April 29 to June 3 1968 (6 x 30 min) 1 Ticket Agency/Bishop/The Candidate/Police 6⅞/Vet’s Waiting Room/A Hard Day’s Night 2 Irritation/Little Old Couple – Travel Agency/A Day In The Life Of A Stuntman/Parliamentary Report/Lady Chatterly/Eat Your Prunes/Tabletop Battleground/Whiffenpoof Song 3 Weather Report/No-one’s Perfect (song)/Royalty At Soccer Match/Traffic/Salome/Headmaster Visits/The Yech

h/Feet (song) 4 Dr.

Jekyll/Little Old Couple 2: Marriage Councellor/Weighing Machine/The Wedding/Egyptian Statues/Bullfighter Policeman/Ballet/My Father’s Shirt (song) 5 Eye-O-Fry/The Gnome/The Sentry/House Flies/Who Are The Black And White Minstrels?/Father And Son/Opera Without Music 6 Is It True What They Say About Dixie?/Hospital Visitor/Driving Instructor/Backchat/Woodworm/Country Tavern/Flo­rist Jungle Series #2: December 9 1968 to January 13 1969 (6 x 30 min) * the order of programmes is based on the overseas transmission package, but the original BBC airing may have been 1, 3, 4, 2, 5 and 6 1 B.B.C.

Apology/May I Paint You In The Nude?/Lightning Coach Tour/Soccer Commentator/The Loneliness Of A Long-Distance Golfer/Newspaper Expose/The Battle Of Britain’s Taxis 2 Dixon Of Dock Green/Little Old Couple 3 – Post Office/Fritz von Angst/The Stuntman On Holi­day/My Kingdom For A Horse/The Seance 3 Z-Cars/Insurance Policy/Kiss Me Hardy/Super Midwife/Serbian Restaurant/The Shooting Of Flicka/Holiday Movies/Population Explo­sion/Henry V/Late Night Call From Mother/Is It Wrong To Love An Elephant? (song)/The Curse Of The Mandervilles/Flying Rabbi 4 (exists in b/w only) Orchestrated Coughing/Television Censorship/Obituary To David Frost/Telephone Callers/Pas De Deux/Danny Gruntfuttock/Carols 5 Mr.

Christian/House Welcomer/Clothists/Football Reun­ion/Headmaster’s Office/French Song For Sauce Lovers/Auction/Newsreader/A Life In The Clergy/Hospital Visitor 6 Call Marty Feldman/Wine Treaders/The Fly/Short-sighted Driver/Science Lecture/Cost Of Living/Punch And Judy Montreux Edition: March 17 1969 (30m “best of”) incl. Lightning Coach Tour/Vet’s Waiting Room/A Day In The Life Of A Stuntman/No-one’s Perfect (song)/May I Paint You In The Nude?/The Loneliness Of A Long-Distance Golfer/ A Hard Day’s Night MARTY AMOK: BBC1 March 30 1970 (45m) Restaurant/Bookshop/Long-Distance Bowler/Judge/Royal Handicap/Cockpit/Atilla The Hun/Buying A Double Bed/Changing Cubicles/Reality In The Cinema *** only two complete episodes (1/2 and 1/5) plus the sketches italicized exist from series 1. The second season, the Montreux edition, plus Marty Amok also survive. N.B.C.

July 16 to September 10 1970 (9 x 50 min) Cast: Charles Nelson Reilly, Marty Feldman, Tommy Tune, Julian Chagrin and the Golddiggers MARTY ABROAD BBC2 January 1 1971 (40 min) THE MARTY FELDMAN COMEDY MACHINE A.T.V. October 1 1971 to January 14 1972 (14 x 50 min) Cast: Marty Feldman, Spike Milligan, Orson Welles, Hugh Paddick and Bob Todd Montreux edition: February 15 1972 (30 min “best of”) THE MARTY FELDMAN SPECIAL 9 Network, Australia July 31 1972 (60 min) MARTY BACK TOGETHER AGAIN BBC1 February 20 to March 27 1974 (not on Mar 6) (5 x 30 min) Cast: Marty Feldman, James Villiers and Derek Griffiths Books MARTY FELDMAN – THE BIOGRAPHY OF A COMEDY LEGEND by Robert Ross (Titan, London.

2011) eYE MARTY – THE NEWLY DISCOVERED AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A COMIC GENIUS by Marty Feldman (Hodder & Stoughton/Coronet, London. 2015) Like this: Marty Back Together Again (TV Series 1974– ) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error a list of 87 titles created 22 Jul 2012 a list of 1320 titles created 20 Nov 2014 Add Image Add an image Do you have any images for this title? 20 February 1974 (UK) See more » Company Credits (Minffordd, North Wales) – See all my reviews Marty Feldman's health had always been precarious; his distinctive pop-eyes were the result of a thyroid condition. By early 1974, he had not appeared on tv in Britain for more than two years, and there were rumours that he was seriously unwell.

To confront those rumours, Feldman (who didn't need the money) starred in a 4-episode sketch-comedy series, "Marty Back Together Again". Among the performers on this series were James Villiers, who specialised in playing upper-class snobs, and hip young black actor Derek Griffiths. The sketches were written by several of Britain's leading comedy scripters: Feldman himself plus Johnny Speight, Barry Took, Barry Cryer and Feldman's old performing partner Graham Chapman (who found time for this assignment between the last two series of "Monty Python"). The American musical satirist Tom Lehrer contributed some songs, and the entire affair was masterminded by veteran producer Dennis Main Wilson. 1 of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes MARTY FELDMAN | JoziLife MARTY FELDMAN The mad world of Marty Feldman By Martin Chilton, photo Marty Feldman in the 1974 film Young Frankenstein Marty Feldman is being celebrated in 2016 in a new West End show called Jeepers Creepers, which is directed by Monty Python’s Terry Jones.

This review of a biography of the comedian, who had a mild, wild life, was first published in November 2011. Those bulging egg eyes helped make Marty Feldman a comedy megastar but he was always quite deadpan about his looks. After being cast in Gene Wilder’s award-winning 1974 film Young Frankenstein, Feldman said: “I am the only guy ever to appear in a horror film without make-up.” The “freaky” appearance, as he described his face, belied an intelligent, inquisitive mind and a nature drawn to, and inspiring of, mayhem. The most enjoyable sections in Robert Ross’s fine 2011 biography of the actor are about the days before Feldman made it as a Hollywood star. Born in London’s Canning Town, to Jewish emigrants from Kiev (who changed their surname), Feldman had a hunger for rebellion. He was repeatedly thrown out of schools – “my whole outlook was ‘ya-boo-sucks'” he said – and left home in his early teens, nourishing a hatred for the 1950s English ethos of “cold showers and mathematics”.

Feldman believed there was something deeply unappealing about the uptight, respectable Englishman, saying once: “The British produced a great number of passionless mass murderers. . . little bank clerks, the neighbourhood doctor. They all have the sort of bald, bony heads and wear pebble dash lenses and raincoats.” Feldman said he had consciously chosen to be a misfit because it was “more interesting”. In his late teens he drifted around Soho – and Paris – indulging in a life of petty crime and getting his kicks on Benzedrine and heroin. Yet he was ambitious, drawn to writing and performing. After working at a fairground, he found regular employment as part of a travelling nude revue show called Saucy Girls. The girls were supposed to stand absolutely still, to avoid titillating audiences, and it amused him when he overheard the advice from a seedy theatre manager to a girl if she was spotted by an official from the Watch Committee moving her nipples. “Tell ’em the rostrum’s rickety.” The life of “putrid” regional theatres and crummy B&Bs is brought wonderfully to life by Ross.

One landlady once brought Feldman and his troupe their vegetables in a chamber pot. The book is well-researched and there are lots of new interviews, and excerpts from exisiting ones including with Feldman’s long-term writing partner, the late Barry Took. In the 1960s, Feldman’s imagination brought him success – with shows such as The Army Game, Bootsie and Snudge and Round The Horne. He certainly had a gift for offbeat ideas and language. Describing one acquaintance, Feldman wrote: “If Orson Welles were dying of cancer and bought himself a fright wig, he would have looked like this man.” It was Feldman who co-wrote the Four Yorkshire Men skit so associated with Monty Python. The Pythons were fans and it is Terry Jones who is directing a tribute stage show to Feldman called Jeepers Creepers. Jones described Feldman as “a very, very funny man”. Feldman always desperately wanted to perform and this meant, ultimately, exploiting the look of his eyes, which he said were “the product of a thyroid condition caused by an accident when somebody stuck a pencil in my eye when I was a boy”.

A move to America, and the success of Young Frankenstein, made him a world star but he was never really happy in Beverley Hills. He hated the gaudy rich and was most at ease when playing football with a group of Italian waiters he had befriended. Feldman remained a football fanatic throughout his life. He once had a character in a sketch called Reginald Sweet who worked for the Football Association, purely so he could answer the phone and say: “Hello, Sweet FA.” Feldman treasured a prized shirt once worn by his Chelsea hero Charlie Cooke. It tickled him that when he took his wife Lauretta to see Chelsea, she commented: “What pretty costumes they’ve got on.” Although wild, he was oddly principled about some matters. He appeared at the Oz trial – daring to ask the Judge: “Am I waking you up?” – and wasn’t afraid to offend Frank Sinatra even when he had gone to hear him sing.

Feldman was announced as part of the audience at a concert but declined a request to meet the famous singer, saying, “I don’t like his politics.” Feldman was not principled about his sex life, though, being repeatedly unfaithful to his Lauretta, his wife for 23 years. He claimed he had been in love 500 times and joked that “success has gone to my crotch”. The years after Young Frankenstein are a tale of painful decline. His brave film In God We Tru$t, which exposed organised religion and greedy evangelist preachers, bombed. His name was toxic at the box office. He became depressed, took even more drugs and allegedly attempted suicide. There were conflicting stories about his death, at the age of 48, in Mexico City in December 1982. A fall on set, food poisoning and drugs were variously blamed for contributing to the massive heart attack that killed him. Jazz was the other real love of his life. Although he described himself as “the world’s worst trumpet player”, he adored playing in bands, including the first that saxophone player Tubby Hayes ever joined.

“I met Groucho Marx and all he did was talk about his bowels,” said the comedian. Feldman’s life, incidentally, offers a object lesson in the maxim that you should not meet your heroes. “I met Groucho Marx and all he did was talk about his bowels,” said the comedian. Feldman fared no better with jazz giant Charlie Parker, whom he met in Paris. “All he did was talk about snooker. I was so pissed off,” Feldman said. His funeral was fitting. A jazz band played I Can’t Give You Anything But Love as he was buried in Los Angeles near Buster Keaton, the comedian he revered above all others. Feldman’s life is an engrossing, tragi-comic story. He was a manic depressive, an addictive personality embroiled in many, many strange adventures. On his 21st birthday, for example, he was beaten up in Cardiff by a Scottish dwarf. Film director Mel Brooks described him as “the most complicated human being I have ever met” and Ross’s thorough biography brings you up close to the strangeness.

Read the book: Marty Feldman: The Biography Of A Comedy Legend by Robert Ross Share the Love of Jozi Recent Posts Barry Took - Telegraph Barry Took 12:10AM BST 02 Apr 2002 BARRY TOOK, who has died aged 73, was a comic writer and performer who contributed to the outrageous 1960s radio series Round the Horne, produced a number of successful radio and television programmes, and offered BBC viewers a forum for complaint on Points of View. With his writing partner Marty Feldman, Took introduced the unsuspecting Radio 4 audience for Round the Horne to an orgy of doubles entendres spiced with the racy patois of the homosexual subculture.

Within months respectable listeners all over Middle England were familiar with the world of palones, omes and ome palones (women, men, and homosexual men), lallies (legs) and eeks (faces), and referring to things they approved of as bona while responding to a suggestion that might be interpreted as risque with cries of "Oooh, inny bold!" Took explained many years later that he and Feldman had picked up this polari - "camp" slang - in their days on the halls. Both entirely "straight" in their private lives, they took great delight in spreading its use among heterosexuals via the characters of the entrepreneurial chorus boys Julian and Sandy. Also included in the weekly gallery of grotesques conjured up by their fertile imaginations were Rambling Syd Rumpo, a deranged folk singer always ready with ballads involving ganders and bogling; the paranoid religious maniac J Peasmold Gruntfuttock; and the ageing cinema heart-throbs Charles and Fiona, recognisably based on matinee idols of the time.

Round the Horne was served by a cast of outstanding comic talents headed by Kenneth Williams and constructed around the authoritative figure of Kenneth Horne, a former RAF officer and business tycoon who provided the perfect foil to the inspired lunacy happening all around him. The series ran for three years and 66 programmes and acquired a cult status of Goon Show proportions, generating repeats cherished by fans more than 30 years on. Moralists regularly protested about the programme, and agonised memos urging moderation flew frequently between BBC programme heads; but the show was staunchly defended by the BBC's director-general, Hugh Greene. It came to an end with Horne's sudden death in 1969 at a Bafta Awards ceremony. Took went on to become a successful radio and television performer as well as a producer and writer, but he never recaptured the carefree exuberance of his Round the Horne days. He wrote in his autobiography two decades later: "When Kenneth died, a part of me died too. I mourn him still." Barry Took, the son of a Smithfield grocery manager, was born on June 19 1928 at Muswell Hill, north London.

A scholarship took him to Stationers, a minor public school in London, and almost immediately, thanks to wartime evacuation, to Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. Rural life failed to impress the teenage Took and he ran away, cycling 20 miles to Peterborough to catch a train back to London despite having no money for a ticket. At 15, he left school and got a job as general factotum with a Tin Pan Alley publisher, secretly hoping to become a song plugger. Instead, he became a cinema projectionist at the Gaumont Palace, Wood Green, where he managed to run Disney's The Three Caballeros upside down and backwards. A long-time admirer of the music hall, by then already in its death throes, Took longed to be recognised as a stand-up comic. After an apprentice spell in working men's clubs, he contrived to be "discovered" by Carroll Levis and was put in charge, as manager and compere, of one of Levis's three touring companies. It was his passport to professional success, but the going on the twice-nightly variety circuit was not easy.

At Wolverhampton, he recalled in his memoirs, he once failed to get a single laugh through all 12 performances. But he later shared top billing with Shirley Bassey and graduated to a long-running West End revue, For Amusement Only, in which he played his trumpet as well as writing and performing. More important, he met Marty Feldman, his future writing partner, and the BBC's Dennis Main Wilson, producer of The Goon Show and later Till Death Us Do Part, who was to put many opportunities Took's way. Took had already tried writing in partnership, with a collaborator called Eric Merriman. He likened the experience to "marriage without the sex - a daily grind of invention leading to impatience, irritation and eventually a parting of the ways". His partnership with Feldman was to provide the most fruitful period of his career. It began with commissions from Granada for episodes of their popular series The Army Game and continued when two of the characters appeared in a new series created by Took and Feldman, Bootsie and Snudge. They had clocked up more than 100 episodes when Feldman pulled out, an event which was to become a recurrent feature of the relationship.

Feldman's unpredictability proved to be due to an over-active thyroid which left him with the bulging-eyed appearance familiar to television audiences. Took himself, though outwardly unflappable, suffered from stress brought on by overwork - by the end of the 1960s he was co-writing three television and radio series and chairing a panel game called Sounds Familiar - and an unhappy first marriage; he spent four years in analysis. Despite these difficulties, Took and Feldman remained together for 10 years, laughing uproariously at their own wit as they sat side by side while Feldman typed and Took wrote in longhand. "We were like brothers and our few arguments were trivial. Round the Horne was the best thing we ever did," Took later wrote. He could even pinpoint what he regarded as their best-ever one-liner. It came in an edition of Round the Horne in which Kenneth Horne, Masterspy, was required to telephone the head of the Football Association, Sir Hubert Sweet, in pursuit of the missing World Cup. "Hello, Sweet FA," came the response. The audience laughter this produced had to be cut because it was making the show overrun.

After Horne's death, Took helped Feldman write his award-winning series for ATV, at first titled simply Marty and then The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine. Its mix of surreal comedy ideas and Feldman's unmistakable appearance - thought at one time to be unacceptable to a domestic television audience - brought the programme the award of the Golden Rose of Montreux. For Feldman it resulted in a brief but high profile Hollywood career, before he died in Mexico of a heart attack. Took was taken on as adviser to BBC Television comedy with a brief to invent or commission some badly needed new shows. He persuaded Barry Humphries in his Dame Edna Everage persona to appear on the BBC, and was a prime mover in bringing together the team which became Monty Python's Flying Circus, thinking (he admitted later) that it would remain a cult show with a minority following. He then accepted an invitation to cross the Atlantic and write for Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, an American show with a considerable following. Took joined a 15-strong stable of writers and was offered the job of head writer, a temptation he refused chiefly because his wife Lyn was getting homesick.

Back in England, he became Head of Light Entertainment for the crisis-ridden London Weekend Television company, with 20 producers at his disposal. Despite the managerial disaffection raging all around him, he mounted a number of successful shows, notably the audience-winning On The Buses. He resigned in protest at the dismissal of his boss, Stella Richman, and was re-engaged by the BBC to turn Evelyn Waugh's Scoop into a seven-part sit-com. He hated the outcome so much that he offered to return his fee if the show could be scrapped, but the offer was not accepted. Though he was to write no more major comedy series for television or radio, Took was recruited to the BBC adult literacy programme On The Move and its successors Your Move and Write Away. He contributed more than 100 mini-sketches aimed at involving the illiterate without patronising them. He also became, in 1979, chairman of Radio 4's The News Quiz, and stayed with the programme for 17 years.

In 1979, he was asked to appear on television himself, to present BBC 1's weekly round-up of viewers' letters, Points of View, which had originally been launched by Robert Robinson in 1961. Its five-minute slot was soon doubled and the show was given an improved schedule just ahead of the Nine O'Clock News. Took's on-screen career lasted for seven and a half years before he decided that he had had enough, just at the moment the BBC heirarchs decided they wanted a new face. Took published seven books, including an autobiography, A Point of View, and several histories of theatrical comedy. He married, first, in 1950, Dorothy Bird; they had two sons and a daughter. The marriage was dissolved, and he married, secondly, in 1964, Lynden (Lyn) Leonard; they had a daughter.

Marty Feldman and 'Jeepers Creepers': Why Terry Jones is celebrating the comic on stage | The Independent Features Marty Feldman and 'Jeepers Creepers': Why Terry Jones is celebrating the comic on stage ​Monty Python's Terry Jones writes about his new West End play, which celebrates one of his inspirations and idols Tuesday 12 January 2016 16:40 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture Marty Feldman My remit for this piece for The Independent was how I first got to meet and know Marty Feldman. That's a very abstract question. When do you first meet or know anyone like Marty? He was part of my lexicon from as far back as I can remember. He tickled my funny bone as a writer of television comedies The Army Game and Bootsie and Snudge, and later radio's Round the Horne. Yes, that was later. Marty, like his esteemed co-writer and friend Barry Took, didn't do things by the book. Telly first, then radio. It was a little like my esteemed co-writer and friend Michael Palin.

We had been chums at Oxford, then we were writing and performing comedy, and being paid for it! Sometimes together, often apart. Hawking sings Monty Python's Meaning of Life hit 'Galaxy Song' I was on the payroll at the BBC when I got the call from Lord God Almighty – you would know him as David Frost. Frankly, we owe everything to David Frost. His weekend satirical show, The Frost Report, gathered in the great and good of comedy writers, and us. Marty Feldman had been put in the unenviable position of script editor. For all of us. Antony Jay, Frank Muir, Bill Oddie, John Cleese, all of us. Madness. Marty did it. Brilliantly. What's more, he did it without any ego. He was an established writer. Mike and I weren't established writers. By any means. Still, when we made our way to that first writers' brainstorming session, it was Marty who leapt from his seat, shook my hand, and welcomed me to this exclusive inner sanctum. Somehow, he knew how I was feeling. Absolutely terrified. After that, he advised, suggested, encouraged, but never rewrote.

He was a brilliant comedy writer. Mike and I were doing other things – mainly a television show, allegedly just for children, called Do Not Adjust Your Set – while my friends Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman and John Cleese (whatever happened to them?) – were making At Last the 1948 Show for David Frost. The year was 1967; the title was ironic. Very Python. In fact, before we were even given the green light for the Flying Circus, Marty was doing wonderful, outrageous and off-kilter sketch comedy for the BBC. It's Marty was the very first BBC comedy show in colour, and somehow crossed Spike Milligan's absurdist command of language, with Buster Keaton's flair for visual comedy. Both Marty and I obsessed over Keaton. For me, he is the best there has ever been and ever will be. Marty felt the same. Spot the superstar: The cast and writers of ‘The Frost Report’, including Feldman on the far left of the front row and Terry Jones, third from the left on the back row next to writing partner Michael Palin on his right (Rex) Tim Brooke-Taylor will tell you that Marty as a second or third banana was unbeatable.

As a star comedian, he got the angst upon him. By the time the BBC grabbed him for his own show, with Tim as first stooge, and the unflappable John Junkin as second stooge, Marty started to believe his own press. Fatal. Mike Palin and I were still jobbers at the BBC, writing bits for Ken Dodd, Roy Hudd – all the greats – but we were offered a few more shillings for Marty's shows if we would double as writers and extras. Believe me, it was only a few more shillings. I didn't mind. We would play footballers, waiters, anything. The script was the thing. And that was my bête noire. We wrote this sketch about a gnome keeping an appointment with a bank manager, in order to get a mortgage to buy a property. It was all Dingley Dell this, and Fairy Dust that. On the evening of the recording, Marty came out in front of the audience and went off script completely. He just did 10 minutes of gnome jokes. Funny, but not our material.

The audience loved it, laughed a lot and I thought: “Shit, I'm done.” Fair play to Marty, after he had got the audience on his side, he did the sketch as written, and that's the one that went out, but I certainly felt from that point on that the only people who could play our sketches properly were Mike and I. Weeks later, we were hatching plans for what would become Monty Python's Flying Circus. After that, everything was so hectic. We were doing the television show, and records, and stage shows, and Marty was being what he always was, the figurehead for brilliant, pioneering comedy. I seem to remember a surprise 40th birthday party for him, at his home in Hampstead, and then we lost touch. He went to America, and did the marvellous Young Frankenstein with Mel Brooks, and directed his own films. Looking back at the comedic timeline, I see we both tackled organised religion at around the same time. We went biblical with Monty Python's Life of Brian, while Marty went contemporary with In God We Tru$t. The message was the same, and we both got severe brickbats from the Bible-bashers.

I still tremble at some of the comments to this day, but Marty's film was using the studio dollar to question the deep-rooted religious belief across America. If you watch it today, and I urge you to watch it, In God We Tru$t is an extraordinary exposure of organised religion, evangelist preachers and pay-to-pray television. At the time, it was box-office poison. Universal Studios cancelled his contract. What do you do when you can't write? As a writer myself, you crumble. If you don't know Marty's final years, I don't want to spoil the play, but thankfully at the end, he was with my dear chums Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Peter Cook, Eric Idle, Spike Milligan... ah, so many, on Graham's pirate comedy Yellowbeard. I was in pre-production for Monty Python's The Meaning of Life at the time. As director, as well as writer and actor, I was extremely up against it when I heard that Marty had died in Mexico City. It seemed ridiculous to me. That's not to be frivolous. It seemed ridiculous. He wasn't much older than me. Certainly less than 10 years. How could he die so young?

Forty-eight. Madness. Graham died in 1989, also at the age of 48. Equally insane. Apparently, Marty's wife, Lauretta, went to her grave convincing herself that Marty was still in Mexico City, filming one last scene for Yellowbeard. For me, Marty is always with us. As writer, funny man and friend. Hopefully, with the play Jeepers Creepers, old fans and new comedy lovers will embrace him and find him as funny as he ever was. And that was very, very funny indeed. 'Jeepers Creepers', directed by Terry Jones, will premiere at the Leicester Square Theatre, London WC2, from 18 January (020 7734 2222; leicestersquaretheatre.com ) More about:

Question: Who was the comic script-writing partner of Marty Feldman?
Answer: Barry Took